The first letters are always the hardest. It’s been long since I sat down and wrote. I don’t know how long I’ll write today. I drove to downtown Seattle to look for a specific coffeehouse. I brought the wrong address, choosing a coffeehouse I visited previously and vowed never to write in again because of its corner feel and painful yuppie ambience. Instead, I drove aimlessly through downtown Seattle for over an hour (and probably more than $30 worth of gasoline) looking for a better coffeehouse. To think, in the coffee capital of the world (well, at least the corporate coffee capital of the world; the Italians might take offense), I was unable to find any decent coffee places. I ended up back in the bucks of stars in Columbia City, my second-most least favorite coffee place, but at least it was close to the Castle and comfortable in the way familiar places tend to be. As you can probably tell by the meanderings, I haven’t sipped my coffee yet. It’s sitting there waiting for me. If coffee talked—and I’m not saying it doesn’t, so don’t get all coffee-rights on me—I imagine it’s voice would be low and grumbly, or maybe I’m thinking of coffee grinds. It’s calling out to me, and I’m not sure I want any of its yummy goodness.

This is the first Doolies-free weekend in a while, and I don’t know what to do with myself. A full three-day memorial day weekend, and I’m wandering through video game worlds, breaking my computer (I smelled something burning yesterday and I hoped it was related to my intensive dusting. I was wrong. Update: after a couple of trips to the local electronics store, the patient is better and should last at least another six months or until the next time I get the stupid idea to open up its innards again. Elective surgery my ass). Now I’m looking for something new, something easy and something green.

Try as I might there is nothing there to go for, nothing to wait for or head out toward. I am waiting in the wings hoping to find something in the real life of the last. He’s a tall thinly striking man—where’s my drawing-pad type of person? I keep looking forward to seeing something but I don’t know of anything to see. I need the best themes of the righteous. I don’t remember how to do any of this. Ah, why isn’t this easier?

The caffeine is not doing anything for me. I’m waiting for it to kick in and turn me into something, but it hasn’t, and I don’t know when or if it ever will. I’m tired of this shit, tired of this not doing anything. It’s a lonely weekend on a lonely evening over the lonely of the last tired of the blue hats and green genie bottles. I’m going to keep hammering away. I don’t know what else to do. There’s not much more going on around this table or in this empty head.

And as if on cue, I put down the funny pen and opened up my Detective Milkshake story. I know it’s not one of my better stories, but it is a “finished” story with an ending, which is a lot more than I can say about most of my writings, and I spent some time cleaning it up, removing lots of extra words and paragraphs, and generally redrafting it. I think this draft is better. Doolies still doesn’t like this story. I think she prefers more action, or at least crazy people heading on trains somewhere or something like that. (Or, and she did make this comment and it’s only now I’m agreeing: the idea of a family fighting over a will is awfully trite.) But I did spend time on it and I figured I’d post it. So there you have it.

I’m still waiting for Chuck to finish his pong story so he can send the ball back over the net. I’ve been in the mood to write something new. Doolies and I were thumbing through some of my older stories earlier, and we hit upon the Circus story and its more interesting outline. I’m not sure I’ll get around to it, but I was thinking one of these days I’d like to write what I had planned. It would have to be a longer story, perhaps bookish sized. Who knows. Just throwing it out there more as a reminder for myself than anything else (certainly not a promise or prediction).